


Lady in waiting

by cupiscent



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-26 11:18:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's never been about a man, but only about herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady in waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://delirieuse.livejournal.com/profile)[**delirieuse**](http://delirieuse.livejournal.com/) for being a hilarious watching partner and a thoughtful soundboard/beta.

The first time, Heimdall is still in his sickbed, surrounded by the leafy views the healers think so therapeutic but that make Sif itch at the thought of threats concealed. The light through those branches paints her skin verdigris as she rises above him, his hands wide on her undulating hips, almost as heavy as his golden gaze.

She thought it would be impossible to even wishfully mistake him for anyone else, entirely opposite as they are. Wrong, it turns out, and she bites her lip as she comes apart, so as not to say something that will embarrass both of them.

*

Sif doesn't know what to do with herself.

Everybody is bad company, or maybe it's more that she is. She doesn't want to expose her sisters and cousins to her bad temper more than she already has. (Tears bother her, frankly.) The other three are irritating her to screaming recently, polishing their tales when all she can remember is words in Thor's mouth she never thought to hear. (Words from a man she thought she knew completely.)

She can't even work out this agitation with a sword in her hands. She could spar with Frigg, but that connection was built upon an assumption they will both have to unmake now. And she's only been drilling alone for five minutes when she remembers other days like this, other sessions, becoming aware that Loki was with her on the field, his concentration just as fierce though his movements may have been arcane. She had never asked him what he was fighting, as he had never asked her. Too late now.

Thor, she simply avoids, not ready to see him grin, to hear him boast. It isn't difficult. He's busy, he's with his father, he's engaged in the mundane tasks of governance he previously created convoluted excuses to avoid, he's standing at the end of the Bifrost, staring into space as though he would wade through it if he could but find the path.

From the healing rooms, Sif cannot even see the stars for the trees.

*

His healing proceeds apace now, his strength running back to him like water downhill. He is allowed from the healing rooms to... do what? His task has been swept away into the universe.

Sif knows what suddenly shifting sands feel like underfoot, though Heimdall seems not at all off balance when she seeks him out, when she offers distractions he seems not to need but takes anyway. He is as hard a warrior as any she has fought alongside; his strength must rival Thor's, for all he applies it far more obliquely, and he is more canny even than Loki, but with discipline that she simply cannot fathom, as resolute as rock. He has watched the universe and sought not to defeat it, nor bring it under his sway. He has run the stars through his mind like sand through his fingers and never yearned to close his grip and possess.

Or had he?

With his full faculties returned, he plays her body like a harp, his hands as sure as her own, but his body bigger, stronger, harder. She wrestles him, knowing how it will inevitably end, but she gets the first hold, and with him pinned, so briefly at her mercy, she demands to know how long he has watched her, how often, what.

She can see half of his dark smile, an edge to it that has never come close to showing in Thor's boyish glee, and it makes her shiver; he breaks the hold, turns it easily, damnably easy, and then she's the one on her back, his thigh between hers, and his fingers. "Enough," he says, lips against her ear, and that's putting it mildly while he effortlessly strips her back to nothing but sensation. She arches, gasps, digs fingers into his shoulder where it is braced over her, as unmoving as the heavens. "Enough," he says, "to know whose name you whisper."

She comes gasping, no name at all.

*

Frigg shows up in her quarters one morning before Sif has really considered leaving them. To say it's unexpected is a vast understatement. She is off balance and out of her depth, unable even to remember what courtesy is most appropriate to what she's currently wearing before Frigg is speaking. "I missed you at supper last night."

Sif had, in fact, been with Heimdall, but that is not why she had not kept their standing engagement. "Your majesty, when you first invited me, you said..."

She had said, after staring for an uncomfortably long time at a Sif who'd come, young and brash and full of righteousness in defense of what she had won... She had said, _Yes, perhaps you will do for a queen of Asgard._

Now, in Sif's quarters, Frigg lifts a stately eyebrow. "You think I can invite a Midgardian girl to supper?"

Of course not, now least of all. But what Sif finds herself saying is, "I think you would like her."

An iron-strong finger beneath her chin draws Sif's gaze forcibly back to the Queen's. "Hmm," Frigg says, and lets her hand fall. "Come to supper next week, child. We must all read the runes as they have been cast."

*

Heimdall says, "You could have had him any time for the asking."

Sif snorts. "So could any woman of Asgard."

"You could have been different."

She turns to look at him. He is too inscrutable, not as Loki had been where the keenest of enquiries slid from him like a whetstone down a blade, but in meeting head-on, enveloping, swallowing whole. It is always she who looks away first.

"You didn't see him when he came back from breaking the Bifrost," she says now. For once, something he hadn't seen, unconscious from shattering the Frost Giants' strongest magic with naught but his will.

"Despair?" he suggests. "The bleakness of lost hope?" But his voice is dry, and she feels a spark of anger, unsure if he is humouring her, playing straight man to her story, _leading_ her somewhere like a child to a lesson.

She follows anyway, for she has come this far. "He looked resolved. Reconciled." Her tongue curls in her mouth, but she says it, "He looked as though had he done other than he had, he would not think himself worthy of her anyway." She fixes him with her gaze. "Could I ever have been that different?"

He, of course, is unmoved. "Not if you never tried."

She is so _tired_ of his reasonable implacability. "Did _she_ try?"

Heimdall doesn't answer. It doesn't deserve an answer. Instead, he says, "There was something Loki told me, when he thought I would never live to tell another. That there are other ways into Asgard than the one which was mine." He tilts his head, watching her like a bird of prey. "Other ways between the realms."

Her first thought is joyous - they can _get out_. It's been barely any time at all, but she can already feel the promise of cabin fever nibbling at the edges of her temper.

And then she realises. "Have you told Thor?"

"I have told you," he says.

*

She doesn't go to him at once. The Allfather forgive her, but she doesn't.

She descends into the lower levels instead, and then deeper still, and again.

And then she pauses. Backtracks some, to those interminable mid-level corridors that twist more than Loki's reasoning ever had, but with the same effect: you could hide _anything_ in here. The finest twigging branches of the worlds-tree, or its roots, or merely the detritus of infinite wars and even more peace. There's no dust, but the silence is thick beneath her soles.

She tells herself she is here to see if it is true. It would not be the first lie to fall apparently carelessly from the Trickster's lips. And it will only hurt Thor, only hurt the realm, if he chases an impossibility.

She is hopelessly lost in less time than a death takes, and the walls are inscrutable enough to be a guardian of any number of paths. They are cold and impenetrable when she trails her fingers along them. They would not yield to her fist, nor her sword, even should she find the entrance to a secret way. She could not break them down.

And what would it matter, if she did? It would not destroy Jane, the fact of her, that she had existed. Which in turn would not make Sif the proper shape to fill the missing part of Thor's heart. And even if she were, it would not mean she had ever attempted to bring him closer to her than a comrade.

She had wanted to be queen, perhaps. Say rather she had wanted a man by her side, a man worthy of the place, and she had looked at all the men she could best in the wrestling ring and thought Thor the only one good enough for her. Like a stupid girl, with a man's sword and a man's pride.

Hopelessly lost, bound in a knot of corridors, and she knows this is no cause for particular panic. He can see her. He has always been able to see her. He can lead her out of this as well, all she must do is ask.

Sif grits her teeth, sheathes her sword, and begins retracing her steps.

*

Thor's eyes light up like a golden dawn at the news, his face coming alive and his laugh echoing in the hall. He catches her up, spins her around, as he hasn't since she won her place among the warriors, and plants a smacking kiss on her cheek.

She lets him. And then she lets him go.

He strides from the hall, calling for architects, dowsers, the master of the dogs. Frigg - Sif had not even realised she was there - trails a hand down her arm (again) and her smile could be sympathetic or sad or simply pleased for her son's joy.

Heimdall is not there, nor is he lurking along the route to Sif's quarters, or waiting inside. None of the presumption she might expect from a younger man.

She considers, briefly, going to him.

Instead, she sets the large copper to heat water, chooses oils for the tub. She may smile as she pries apart the knots of her tunic, peels the hose from her legs, unbinds her hair to sweep over her bare skin. She may, it's true.

But the caress of the bath is hers alone, and bliss.


End file.
